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"Hey honey." Chuck is in his room playing Zelda on his gameboy and pretending his mother hadn't told him to finish unpacking today, when he hears the distinct sound of the front door shutting, his mother's voice, and a loud smacking noise that must be her kissing Thomas on the cheek. "Who's this?"
"Ugh, mom, gross," grumbles Thomas, and Chuck can picture him, no doubt frowning and wiping at his face with the sleeve of the gross grayish sweatshirt their mother has been trying to convince him to get rid of for months now. "This is Minho, he's in my science class."
That really catches Chuck's attention, and he pauses his gameboy, gets up off his bed, and walks over to the door, slipping out of his room and down the hall so he can look around the corner into the living room. Thomas is standing on one side of their breakfast bar, a short Asian kid at his side, their mother across from them in the kitchen.
"Nice to meet you Mrs-" starts Minho, reaching out one hand.
"Please," she says, smiling and shaking his hand gently. "Call me Helen."
"Okay we're going to my room now," says Thomas, grabbing Minho's arm and pulling him towards his the hallway.
"How was your first day?" she calls, as if Thomas was at kindergarten rather than ninth grade. Chuck had gotten the exact same talk when she'd picked him up from his middle school an hour before.
"Good," says Thomas over his shoulder.
"Do you want a snack or something?" she calls.
"Yeah, thanks mom!"
Chuck realizes all of a sudden how obvious it will be that he was eavesdropping and turns to go back into his room, but he's too late, and just as he's reaching for the doorknob, Thomas and Minho come around the corner.
"Hey Chuck," says Thomas, ruffling his hair as he leads Minho towards his room. "That's my little brother."
Minho turns to Chuck and grins. "Hey kid," he says.
Chuck grins back. None of Thomas' friends in Kansas had even looked twice at Chuck, let alone smiled and said hello. "Hey," he says back, before Thomas drags Minho into his room and shuts the door behind them.
***
Thomas makes a few more friends in the first few months of school. There's a tall boy named Newt who smiles at Chuck but rarely talks to him, a quiet boy named Alby who Chuck is pretty sure doesn't actually like anyone besides Newt, and an angry boy named Gally who he doesn't even know why Thomas hangs out with, considering they seem to hate each other. Neither Chuck or Thomas likes any of them quite so much as Minho though. Thomas' face lights up whenever he sees him, and Chuck can't help but look forward to every time he comes over and offers him a nod and a "hey kid," as he goes into Thomas' room.
He also can't help but notice that Thomas has finally thrown away the gross grayish hoodie, and he wonders if it has anything to do with his new friend.
***
There are a few months when Thomas is in tenth grade and Chuck is in eighth when Gally starts coming over almost every day, and Minho hardly comes over at all. Even worse, when he does come over, he's always withdrawn and morose, and his "hey kid"s have no emotion to them. Chuck has no idea what's going on until he gets home early from robotics club one day to find Gally and Thomas making out on the couch in the living room. Chuck realizes several things all at once. First, Thomas and Gally are dating, second, Minho definitely has feelings for Thomas, and third, his brother has a somewhat alarming number of moles on his chest.
"Um," he says, covering his eyes quickly. "Hey."
"Hey," says Thomas sheepishly. There is a rustling noise, some squeaking from the couch's old springs, before, "um. My shirt's back on, you can uncover your eyes now."
Chuck uncovers his eyes. Gally says nothing.
"I'm just gonna..." says Chuck, gesturing towards his room.
"Yeah, okay," says Thomas, face bright red.
"I'm gonna go," Chuck hears Gally mutter as he leaves the room.
"You sure?" asks Thomas.
"Yeah. I'll call you later."
***
"So Thomas, honey, why hasn't Minho come over lately?"
It's a few weeks later and the whole family is sitting around the dinner table, even their sister Teresa, who's rarely home from her rehearsals for the school play in time to eat with the rest of them. Thomas glances at Gally, who's sitting beside him, so quickly that Chuck probably wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't been looking closely. He frowns, shrugs, and looks down at his mashed potatoes muttering something about Minho being busy with basketball. Chuck shoots Thomas a look, which he ignores. He knows for a fact that the basketball season doesn't start for another two weeks. Their mother drops the subject, but Chuck notices Gally shooting Thomas angry glances through the rest of dinner.
Their parents go out for ice cream once they've all finished eating, and Teresa goes to her friend Brenda's house, leaving Chuck with dish duty.
The shouting starts the moment the door shuts behind Teresa. Chuck doesn't manage to hear most of it from the kitchen, but he does make out Gally's "I thought you were over him!" and Thomas' "Well so did I!" right before they fall silent. There is quiet for a few moments before Gally comes out of Thomas' room, eyes red. He says nothing to Chuck when he walks past him and out the front door.
Chuck doesn't know what to do. He has no experience with this; none of his friends are cool enough to date anyone, Teresa is notorious for dumping everyone she dates, and Thomas has never broken up with anyone before - or if he has, he didn't tell Chuck about it. He's just about to go up to Thomas' room and see if he's okay when there's a knock on the door. He dries his hands quickly and goes to open it, revealing Minho, a pint of ice cream in one hand and the DVD of the Breakfast Club in the other.
"Hey kid," says Minho, and Chuck can't help but grin. "How is he?"
Chuck shrugs. "I don't know. I was just about to check on him. But I think he'd like it more if you did it."
Minho blushes and ducks his head, and Chuck almost laughs. "He's in his room. Go on in."
Chuck goes back to washing the dishes, a wide smile on his face.
***
Minho spends even more time at their house after that. He sleeps in Thomas' room at least one day every weekend, claiming his younger siblings have been driving him crazy, but Chuck can see the way that they look at each other when they think the other one isn't looking, and he's not buying it.
It takes him about six months to get sick of it.
"So do you like Minho?" he asks when they're getting ready for school one day in the October of his ninth grade year and Thomas' eleventh, just as Thomas is taking a drink of his coffee.
He chokes. "No, of course not. Minho? Gross. Why would you think that?"
"No reason," says Chuck, smiling and glancing up from tying his converse. "Just, I think he likes you. And you know, it's been a long time since you and Gally broke up."
Thomas shushes him and glances over at where Teresa is putting on makeup with the bathroom door open. She turns to them and smirks. "Oh, are you guys talking about how Tom and Gally dated last year? Or are you talking about how he totally wants to bone Minho?"
Thomas gapes like a fish out of water. "I didn't- how did you-"
Teresa laughs. "Come on Tom, you're like the least subtle person I know. Everyone at school knew."
Thomas blushes bright red. "Oh. I... Oh."
"Come on," she says, putting her mascara back in her makeup bag and leaving the bathroom. "If you two idiots don't hurry up, we're going to be late."
Thomas is silent and bright red all the way to school.
***
It's pouring rain when Chuck gets out of robotics club that afternoon, and he stands under an awning by the parking lot while he waits for Thomas to pick him up. The rain seems to be falling sideways though, and he's beginning to lose hope of ever being warm or dry again when Minho pulls up in his beat up old pickup truck. "Hey kid!" he shouts, rolling the window down as far as it will go, which is only about six inches. "Need a ride?"
"Thanks," says Chuck, pulling the passenger open with a squeak and climbing up onto the cracked leather seat.
"No problem," says Minho. "Thomas texted me, apparently his car wouldn't start, and Teresa won't be done with rehearsal for another hour or two, so he asked if I could drive you home after football."
"Oh," says Chuck. "Thanks."
"Anything for my favorite freshman, right?" says Minho, grinning and reaching over to ruffle Chuck's hair.
"Isn't your sister a freshman?"
Minho laughs. "Yeah, don't tell her I said that."
They drive in relative silence for a moment, the only sounds in the car the faint rattling of Minho's ancient engine, and the steady drip drip drip from the hems of Chuck's pants. When the quiet gets to be too much, Chuck speaks again.
"Do you like Thomas?"
Minho slams on the brakes, the car screeching to a stop as his face turns from white to bright red in the space of a few seconds.
"What? No. Why?"
Chuck shrugs. "You guys are always looking at each other like-" He stops, puts his hands together, opens his eyes wide, and lets his mouth drop open a little bit, and Minho is a little unnerved how much he looks like Thomas.
"No we're not," he says. Someone behind them honks, and he turns his gaze back to the road in front of him and starts driving again. "We're just friends."
"Okay," says Chuck, messing with the zipper on the front of his sweatshirt. "It's just, you guys do this thing, where you'll stare at Thomas until he looks over at you, and then you'll look away and he'll stare at you for a while, and then you glance back, and it's this whole... Thing."
"I don't think-"
Chuck cuts him off. "Trust me. He talks about you all the time too. It's pretty gross."
"Oh," says Minho, holding onto the wheel so tightly his knuckles turn white. "Huh. Cool."
***
When they get to the house, Thomas is sitting at the kitchen table, typing something on his laptop.
"Hey," says Thomas, looking up, the smile that Chuck calls his "Minho face" spreading across his face.
"Hey," says Minho. "Can I talk to you?"
"Yeah," says Thomas, his eyebrows drawing together. "You wanna-?" He gestures back towards his room.
"Yeah, cool."
Minho waits for Thomas to get up and unplug his laptop before following him into his room. He glances back at Chuck once, and Chuck grins and shoots him a thumbs up. Minho offers a weak smile in return.
They talk in hushed tones for a few minutes, but Chuck can't make out any of it, even with his ear pressed up against the wall between his room and Thomas'. The sound of talking stops quickly though, replaced by the sound of squeaking bedsprings, and Chuck springs away from the wall. He immerses himself in his science homework until he hears the shrill noise of a phone ringing through the wall.
"Hello?" says Minho, voice breathless. "Hey mom... Yeah, I'm still at Thomas'... Yeah, 10 minutes... Okay, love you too. Bye."
Chuck gets up off his bed, opening his bedroom door just as Minho comes out of Thomas's.
"Bye kid," says Minho as he walks past him, face flushed.
Chuck grins. "Your shirt's buttoned wrong."
Minho's cheeks turn an even brighter red as he looks down. "Oh. Uh, thanks."
Chuck's smile just grows wider. "Anytime."